


All Over Again

by fmo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Kinda, Kisses, M/M, Magic, Time Travel, and more implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1393783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wakes up in 1944, where everyone is still alive. Where Bucky is still alive. </p><p>It's not as simple as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Over Again

In the long breath that happens as Steve wakes up, he thinks that something’s different. Something’s strange. The sounds of the street, the sounds of the heating . . .

Aren’t there. He’s freezing and there’s a breeze on his skin.

He sits up fast and—he’s not in his apartment in Brooklyn at all. He’s lying on a blanket on the ground in a tent, and he knows this green tent, it’s one he had in 1944. It’s cold like autumn, like that October in 1944 when the Howling Commandos were in their glory days, and—

Steve pushes himself out of his tent in a burst to find the clouds and thin light of early morning, the purple line of the Alps in the distance, and a campfire with—with Dum Dum Dugan and Bucky sitting around it. Dum Dum is boiling a canister of water and Bucky’s cleaning his rifle like he was always cleaning his rifle, because everything else could be a mess but Bucky kept his weapons perfect. Dum Dum’s talking and Bucky’s just listening, and there’s stubble on Bucky’s face and a cut across his nose that Steve remembers from a mission to a Hydra plant where Bucky caught a bit of falling masonry to the face. Distantly, Steve thinks that this must mean the mission is over, and they’re on their way back to the rendezvous, and then back to London. It’s October 20th, 1944.

It’s 1944, and they’re all alive—Peggy’s here, and Howard, and the Commandos, and _Bucky’s here_ , and alive. He breathes the cold air in fast and thinks: he’s been given a chance to save Bucky. He can make what happened right.

Then Bucky turns and says, “Steve?” and Bucky looks so much better and more real than all of Steve’s memories and all of the pictures and movies that Jarvis can find that Steve just can’t say anything.

“Steve?” Bucky says again, frowning, and he stands up. Dugan turns, too, but Steve says, “It’s nothing, I just had a—a bad night’s sleep, I think I was sleeping on a rock.”

Bucky looks a little doubtful, but he sits down again and puts his rifle back together, and Dugan says, “Well, I’m about to make coffee.”

“Right,” Steve says. “Probably time for us all to get up.”

 

***

 

Back in London, they’re supposed to be on leave and Steve knows he ought to go out, like he did the first time he lived 1944, but his mind is caught up in thinking through everything that’s yet to happen and how it all leads to Bucky on that train. He can’t write anything down, but he has to make sure Bucky won’t fall this time. Maybe they have to capture Zola earlier.

“Hey,” Bucky says, startling Steve out of his reverie. He’s leaning on the edge of Steve’s doorway; Steve got his own room in the barracks in London because he was the Captain, but he always left the door open. Bucky used to come in often.

And now Bucky comes in and sits on the bed next to Steve. “What’s eating you?” he says. “Don’t give me that ‘I slept on a rock’ crap. Ever since this morning, you’ve been in a daze.” He’s wearing his uniform, but no tie, and his shirt is unbuttoned at the neck; his hair is a little more disarrayed than it ought to be in 1944, though it’s still too neatly parted for 2014. He’s shaved, though, and the cut on the bridge of his nose is healing a little. His eyes are blue; none of the movies or the photos captured that.

Steve loves him. He was never able to say that in 1944, wasn’t even able to do it in 2014, but seeing Bucky now is enough to finally bring it out. This is different from Peggy, though: Peggy is his heart hammering, the zing of her voice and her bravery and the way she walks, big strides. It’s her perfume and the way she stands close to him and then looks at him like a slow challenge. It’s love, but different from with Bucky. With Bucky, it’s a slower feeling, and maybe that’s why he didn’t realize before now. With Bucky, it’s a pulse in his veins, it’s looking at Bucky and holding every single part of him dear, it’s wanting to be near to Bucky always.

“It’s nothing,” Steve says. “I’ve just been thinking.”

Bucky bites the inside of his lip for a moment, which isn’t what Steve expected him to do. Steve thought Bucky would rub his face and then say something like, “And you thinking always goes so well.” But he doesn’t. He just says, “Thinking about what?”

Steve can’t say _thinking about when you died_ or even _thinking about living in 2014 without you_ , so instead he says, “I think I’m gonna start bringing rope along on our missions.”

“Rope?” 

“Yeah, just. You know, when I jumped across that gap in Austria, you said we oughta have rope.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows; he's always been pretty good at seeing through Steve's shit. “Steve, that was—that was a long time ago. What made you think of it now?”

“Just thinking.” Steve shakes his head, as if to clear out the cobwebs. “Anyway. I guess we ought to go.”

“Wait,” Bucky says abruptly, and he puts his hand on Steve’s arm.

“Yeah?”

“Steve,” Bucky says. He looks off at the concrete, windowless wall, and Steve can’t quite tell his expression from seeing just the one side of his face. “I guess I just wanted to say that—“ He takes a deep breath. “You know, no matter what happens, I’ll never regret any part of it that’s with you.” He looks back at Steve and adds, more lightly, “And you need to make a move with Agent Carter, because you should be happy after this is all over, and that means you actually have to tell Carter that you like her first." 

Steve knows for sure Bucky never said anything like this to him the first time he was in 1944. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Bucky knew he was going to fall. “Bucky, you’re talking like you’re not going to make it back,” he says.

“Well, you never know,” Bucky says, standing up and straightening his jacket. “You coming?”

“No.” Steve stands up, but doesn’t move. His spine is tingling with the same feeling he gets when a Hydra sniper is watching him, but he’s not afraid; he might actually be working his way up to angry. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Bucky says, sounding dead tired. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, that’s all. Now can we go before the bar gets bombed out?" 

“What if I don’t want to marry Agent Carter?” Steve says, which stops Bucky when he’s halfway out the door.

Bucky turns around. “Of course you do," he says. "You love her, don’t you?”

“I’ve had time to think it through a little,” Steve says. He does love Peggy, but it’s possible to love more than one person. And if he had his choice, if it was 2014 and he had both of them and they both loved him back, he knows who he’d choose.

“Someone else?” Bucky says. “Private Lorraine?”

Steve thinks all that anger that was prickling under his skin is about to turn to something else, and usually what it turns into is doing something reckless and ill-advised. “Not Private Lorraine,” he says. His heart is pounding.

Bucky takes a step back into the room and pushes Steve’s door closed behind him, keeping his eyes fixed on Steve all the while. Neither of them says anything, but Steve walks forward and—and, he realizes, this is the line. He could back down now and everything could be forgotten, nothing would change. But he’s got a chance now that he never dreamed of and, well, nobody ever said Steve Rogers was sensible.

Steve raises his hand to Bucky’s jaw, and then leans forward, and then Bucky moves the last inch and they’re kissing and it’s _easy_. Steve still doesn’t have that much experience, but he’s heard people talking about kissing like it’s a science; but this time, he closes his eyes, and it’s effortless. And it’s better because he can feel Bucky’s personality come out in the kiss, and Bucky’s never tentative but never too rough either, he’s charming and sly and exact, too. 

“Are you really Steve,” Bucky breathes when they break apart.

“Of course I am. Are you really Bucky?” 

“Whatever’s left,” Bucky says, which Steve doesn’t completely understand.

“Are we still going out?” Steve says, just as Bucky leans back in.

“Are we?” says Bucky, his lips moving over Steve's as he speaks.

Steve knows that in 1944 this is a lot more dangerous than in 2014, but 1944 has it wrong, and he’s going to do what’s right.

He locks the door, and Bucky laughs.

 

*** 

 

Two hours later, or so, Steve’s stretched out on his back and Bucky’s leaning over him, tracing his face with his hand, and Steve’s memorizing Bucky’s face in turn. He knows this angle from many nights of Bucky watching over smaller-Steve in bed, but this is a much better context.

Bucky glances at his watch.  “Almost midnight,” he says, with a strange sudden urgency.

“The guys’ll be gone for another hour at least,” Steve says, tugging gently on Bucky's arm to get him to lie down.

“Steve,” Bucky says, and he’s not laughing any more. “Find another way, all right? Don’t put the plane in the water. Bring a parachute, or something.”

Steve sits up so fast it makes his head spin. His hand falls away from Bucky’s arm; he couldn’t be more awake if someone had just dumped a bucket of cold water on him.

 “How do you know?” he says.

“How do I—how do _you_ know?” Bucky says. He sits back, a little away from Steve, and pushes his hand through his hair. “You’re not supposed to know,” he says helplessly.

“Because _I lived through it_ ,” Steve says. “What do you mean, I’m not supposed to know? _How do you know?_ ”

Bucky glances at his watch again. “I know everything, Steve. I know I fall; I know you put the plane in the water, I know you wake up in 2011.” In the dim light of the bedside lamp, Steve realizes that Bucky’s expression is one of exhaustion—bone-deep tiredness that Steve’s never seen on his face before, except perhaps just after Steve pulled him off the table in the Hydra factory. “I didn’t expect this, but I guess I just—I just wished that 1944 could be real again. And this was the day we got.” 

“You . . . wished?” Steve says. “In heaven?” He realizes he sounds like a child, baffled by something he doesn’t understand. He thinks of the files SHIELD gave him: _MIA_ was what they’d written on Bucky’s. “Bucky, what happened to you after you fell?”

Bucky’s shoulders fall, and in the moment when he doesn’t answer, Steve sees something in Bucky’s eyes that frightens him to his heart. “If you want to find what’s left of me,” Bucky says at last, “look for the Winter Soldier.”

Steve opens his mouth to ask what that is, but then—

He’s asleep.

He’s waking up.

He’s waking up to the sound of sirens and cars honking on the street outside, and the tap-tap-tap of his building’s old pipes, and the faint hum of sleeping electronics.

Steve sits up in his big king-size bed with his big soft comforter and puts his face in his hands.

A few hours later, when he’s finally showered and put clothes on, he decides that what he needs is JARVIS. If that was just a dream, well, it was just a dream. But he’s never had a dream like that before.

Fortunately, Tony’s in. “You look like shit,” he tells Steve. “Coffee? Domestic beer? Shot of vodka?”

Steve shakes his head. “I need your help to find something,” he says.

“Google Maps,” Tony starts, but Steve interrupts him.

“It’s important. Can you ask JARVIS?”

“Sure,” Tony says, most likely as much out of curiosity as the kindness of his heart. “JARVIS, you listening? Steve, what is this special thing you’re looking for?”

“The Winter Soldier,” Steve says.

There’s the familiar half-second it takes for JARVIS to do his (its?) work, and then a transparent picture pops up in front of Steve and Tony, showing a collage of images. “According to SHIELD’s databanks, the Winter Soldier is a Soviet secret operative and assassin trained by the Red Room, a branch of the KGB known for brainwashing and mind control techniques,” JARVIS says. “The Winter Soldier has been periodically active since the 1950s or earlier, but he is consistently described as appearing to be in his twenties, leading some to believe that the Winter Soldier is only a myth or, alternatively, a codename shared by multiple operatives. Those who believe in his existence believe that he was retired or perhaps broke free of the Red Room in the 1990s. His current location is not known.”

The images shift and crowd on the holographic collage.

“Wow. Cap, is this what you were looking for?” Tony says. “Steve?”

Steve looks at the pictures, and breathes in, and breathes out, and looks for the eyes above the mask.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments, they sustain me!
> 
> This fic is based on a moment from the comics (I can't remember exactly where, which is super bugging me) [edit: It's Winter Soldier: Winter Kills, thank you redinkc!] where Winter Soldier thinks something like, "I'd give anything to be back in 1944 again." So, here is the result of that! I intentionally left the wish-granting mechanism mysterious because it doesn't really matter if it was Asgardian god-meddling or Wanda or Dr. Strange or just the force of Bucky wishing really REALLY hard.
> 
> Come say hi to me at fmowrites.tumblr.com, and if you found this fic through a rec, please tell me! I love to hear about being recced.


End file.
